Wednesday Whimsy: The Moon is more useful than the Sun

I had planned writing a piece on the Mullah Nasruddin for some while. Partly because I think that our understanding of Islam is so cruelly coloured by the austere extremism of Deobandi and Wahhabi interpretations but mostly because the stories – the jokes as they are so often described – bring back memories of childhood. I remind myself of my father who would use the stories in his speeches to council and who would – at the drop of a hat - launch into a Nasruddin anecdote or make some sweeping Cantona-esque statement such as “They show you the women - and then try to sell you the clothes!".”

On one level the stories are simply jokes and can be treated as such but there is a depth to them that belies merely chortling. Think for a moment on this:

"Once, the people of The City invited Mulla Nasruddin to deliver a khutba. When he got on the minbar (pulpit), he found the audience was not very enthusiastic, so he asked "Do you know what I am going to say?"The audience replied "NO", so he announced "I have no desire to speak to people who don't even know what I will be talking about" and he left.

The people felt embarrassed and called him back again the next day. This time when he asked the same question, the people replied "YES"

So Mullah Nasruddin said, "Well, since you already know what I am going to say, I won't waste any more of your time" and he left.

Now the people were really perplexed. They decided to try one more time and once again invited the Mullah to speak the following week.

Once again he asked the same question - "Do you know what I am going to say?" Now the people were prepared and so half of them answered "YES" while the other half replied "NO". So Mullah Nasruddin said "The half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the other half" and he left!"

Just a joke or something more? Many of the Nasruddin stories are about getting people to think for themselves rather than merely taking the opinion of the “Mullah” as gospel. Again, this is not a regular view we have of Islam – we seem to take it as a religion of absoluteness, unquestioning, stark, definite, without nuance. Yet most Muslims will be more familiar with Nasruddin’s jokes than with the writings and saying of great preachers, imams and Islamic scholars. And as is often the case with these things, the quiet, slightly irreverent, jokey little stories provide a better guide to the outlook of most Muslims that the rather scary, beardedness that is paraded before us by those who would frighten us into compliance.

Whatever. I just like the stories – indeed the titles are often enough to bring a smile and raise a question. So I leave you with this…

“The Moon is more useful than the Sun”

Think about it and enjoy!